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Sooners defeated Dartmouth in game six of the NSSBL final 3-2
Sydney Sooners win championship over Dartmouth.
The Sydney Sooners are once again the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League champions after defeating the Dartmouth Moosehead Dry in game six at the Susan McEachern Memorial Ball Park on Friday night.
The Sooners won the game 3 – 2 in the top of the ninth after Josh Forrest caught a pop-fly by third base. The first four innings were scoreless. In the fifth inning Sydney scored two runs with Phil Brown hitting a single, Sean Ferguson bunting a single and Johhny MacLeod hitting an RBI double that sent Brown home. Ferguson made it home on a fastball while Josh Forrest was at bat.
Sydney kept the pressure up in the bottom of the sixth inning with Kenny Long scoring on an infield error, that gave the Sooners a 3 – 0 lead heading into the top of the seventh.
Jim “Rico” McEachern, head coach of the Sydney Sooners, said although the Sooners were struggling to get hits early on in the game they kept working until their offense clicked.
“We tried to run earlier in the game and had a couple runners caught but we weren’t going to give up in that part of the game, that’s what has been successful for us. The seventh inning was a great inning, it kept the game close for us and let us pick away,” said McEachern.
Dartmouth rallied in the top of the seventh and eighth and scored a run in each inning to bring the game to a 3 – 2 score heading into the ninth.
Sheldon MacDonald, pitched a full 9 innings and kept the Dartmouth Moosehead Dry to five hits for the game. McEachern said that MacDonald was solid throughout the entire game, including the final innings.
“You could tell it was pretty tense and I recall I turned to Shelly (MacDonald) and asked him if he had one inning left in him and someone said to me after he headed out for the ninth that you couldn’t have taken the ball off him.”
MacDonald said after the game that his team’s defense was a crucial aspect of the Sooners game six win on Friday.
“Full marks to our team, we have the best defense in the league for sure and the boys kept the bat on the ball in the right situations and we scored, stayed up and stayed positive,” said MacDonald.
“As long as I go out there and throw strikes, even in the ninth inning I knew our defense would pull through for us.”
After the win on Friday, the Sydney Sooners now have won the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League’s Championship three times in the past five years. Sydney also won the championship in 2013 and 2014.